So what I'm hearing you say is...

Highlights of Pre-Cana:

• It was not as bad as we thought it would be.
• We sat with two couples that were very similar to the two of us which put Ian at ease. All three of us couple live with our fiances, love dogs and are very career motivated.
• We learned some useful stuff. We learned a lot of differences between men and women, and some tools for learning more about your significant other. You'd think you know everything about your partner, but I did learn some interesting stuff. They use a lot of psychological exercises and tools to help learn more. For instance, I learned the 5 ways to show love: Affection, Gifts (surprises for the other person), Acts of Service (doing the laundry for your s.o., making tea for the other person, etc.), Quality Time and Words of Encouragement or Gratitude. I found out that Ian feels most loved by Words (saying thanks and recognizing when he does something nice or just does his daily things to help out) and Acts of Service (me taking out the trash once in a while as that is something he normally takes on). I on the other hand, feel most loved by Gifts and Affection. So anyways - recognizing those things and being able to show your SO love through the way they feel most loved helps you make each other feel all lovey dovey - awww, how precious.
• There was lots of food. Cookies, snacks, muffins, donuts, fruit. I ate way too many snacks! Ian was happy with the selection.
• Ian and I giggled our way through the day.

Lowlights of Pre-Cana:

• Some of the speeches were not very enthusiastic and made me cringe. I understand why the Catholic religion has such a bad reputation. When a speaker says that the woman should stay home from work for at least 8 months when the baby is born, it angers me quite a bit. And also saying that since children are your most prized possession, if at all possible you should stay home with your children to raise and love them. EEK! It makes me absolutely cringe to hear these things. A) Get with the times. Women have careers and shouldn't be the default parent to stay home and B) Babies cost money which in today's world means that there are a lot of households where both parents need to work! And it made me uncomfortable that they emphasize kids so much. I, personally, do not mind it at all because kids are in our future. But what about the couples getting married that don't want kids, or can't have kids? It made me sad for them.
• It was somewhat boring.

All in all, it was not bad! One topic discussed was the art of active listening. They went through and talked about it and how to practice it. We then were instructed to pick an issue that we've fought about in the past or an issue we're currently having and practice the active listening exercise for 5 minutes. The speaker speaks for 2.5 minutes without being interrupted by the listener and when the listener does speak they say "So what I am hearing is that you feel hurt by ______" and so on, and then the roles reverse. Well, Ian and I sat and giggled back and forth trying to come up with an issue to even practice with. "Do you have an issue?" No, I can't think of any, can you?" "No not really." Then a couple minutes into it Ian suggested the issue of me not putting the toilet paper on the roll and just leaving it beside the toilet or on the side of the bathtub (this used to drive him crazy, so I have since corrected this issue for the most part). But as we've already resolved that issue, we couldn't even really talk about that one. By the time we had decided on an issue, time was up. Yep, that's us. We laugh and go back and forth so much that we never come up with anything. So I don't think we got much out of that exercise.

We also learned the signs that communication is breaking down between two people. It was interesting to hear these things (I can't remember all of them - I'll have to add them later) and then think of some situation that has happened in my life where those things have happened. Either a friendship ended because of it, or a relationship truly changed because of the communication breakdown, or I could name a person that tends to use one of these communication no-nos. It was so fascinating.

Sunday consisted of running a whole bunch of errands. We went to Michael's to get supplies to make one of our projects for the wedding. We ended up finding adorable name cards and got the rest of the needed supplies. Only bad thing is that we can't print the name cards - so anyone have beautiful handwriting skills and want to offer their services to me? If not, we might have to make the printing work somehow. We also did grocery shopping and picked up Tessa's organic food (otherwise known as makes-me-broke food) - she's spoiled.

How was your weekend?